A guide wire for medical treatment is used for introducing and indwelling a medical tool such as a catheter and an introducer kit inside a blood vessel when carrying out diagnosis and treatment of a blood vessel percutaneously. In the past, the predominant thinking was that the region for introducing a medical device such as a catheter into a blood vessel is a femoral region (FEMORAL-REGION). But in order to reduce the burden on the patient, there has been a trend in recent years to shifting to a brachial region (BRACHIAL-REGION) and, in particular, to a radial region (RADIAL-REGION). There has been a desire for a guide wire for medical treatment which can be used safely inside an arm blood vessel that often includes a branch and/or a meandering configuration and also, and which exhibits excellent operability.
In the past, there has been used a guide wire for medical treatment having a J-shape at the distal end thereof when carrying it from a radial region (RADIAL-REGION) to a target region in the vicinity of the heart. In this case, insertion is carried out into the blood vessel by setting the J-shape of the distal end upright, but when the guide wire is further pushed ahead in a state in which the J-shape of the distal end reaches a side-branch of the blood vessel, the guide wire deviates from the aimed blood vessel and is pushed-ahead toward the side-branch. In this case, the operation was complicated such that the operator must pull out the guide wire from the side-branch once and thereafter, must push it forward again by aiming the objective blood vessel. Further, whether or not the guide wire moves erroneously into the side-branch is confirmed usually by using an X-ray contrast and the operator has to inject the contrast agent to the patient in each case thereof, so that there was a fear of physical influence with respect to the patient.
To address this, Japanese Unexamined Application Publication No. 2004-181184 discloses a guide wire constructed to prevent it from going erroneously into a branch of a blood vessel by setting the angle formed between an extended line of a distal straight line portion of a J-shaped guide wire and a wire base to be 40° to 70°.
However, in case of carrying a guide wire from a radial region (RADIAL-REGION) to a heart, the guide wire must be advanced through a blood vessel path having a lot of branched blood vessels compared with a femoral region (FEMORAL-REGION) or a brachial region (BRACHIAL-REGION). Even employing a J-shaped guide wire whose distal end is formed by a certain angle, it is not able to avoid the guide wire from moving erroneously into a branched blood vessel, and there has been required a guide wire which can be carried reliably until a target region in the vicinity of the heart. Moreover, even if there is a case in which the J-shape of the distal end goes straight ahead after returning to the original J-shape caused by inversion in a state of getting into the branched blood vessel, there might occur a case in which the guide wire will go erroneously into a different branched blood vessel depending on the distal shape of the guide wire.